A procedure of reading a document or the like as image data, recognizing a character string existing in the generated image data, and using the recognized character string as part of a database is known. One character recognition method is disclosed which can increase the detection accuracy of a character string whose character interval and word interval are short.
There are posters etc. having such designs that plural character strings overlap with each other. To correctly recognize such a character string as a URL or a mail address that a user wants to acquire, which exists in a document or a poster containing plural character strings, it is necessary to recognize a character string in view of plural features such as a direction of the character string in addition to a character interval.